Krafton, the publisher of PUBG, is adding Subnautica creators Unknown Worlds to its portfolio. The studio will continue to work independently on ongoing updates for Subnautica and Subnautica: Below Zero while also developing a new "genre-defining game" that is expected to begin early access in 2022.
“It was immediately apparent how closely Unknown Worlds and Krafton are aligned in the way we think about games and game development,” Unknown Worlds CEO Charlie Cleveland said in a press release.
“Subnautica and PUBG both started humbly and evolved successfully through constant iteration and feedback. We want to bring new games to the world stage – and with Krafton, we’re a big step closer. We’re truly looking forward to our future together.”
Unknown Worlds is Krafton's sixth studio, joining PUBG Studios, Striking Distance Studios, Bluehole Studio, RisingWings, and Dreamotion. Unknown Worlds will retain its current structure and leadership team and continue to employ developers around the world.
“Unknown Worlds are incredibly skilled and passionate developers with an unparalleled gift for creativity and a proven track record of building successful player-driven worlds.” Krafton CEO CH Kim said in the release. “Krafton will spare no effort in helping them. Not only do they enhance our development capabilities, but we share a goal of creating unique experiences for global audiences.”
Passing is in theaters for a limited release on Oct. 27 with digital streaming on Netflix Nov. 10, 2021.
Based on Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel of the same name, Passing is a period piece objectively about race that transcends that binary distinction to explore the lengths people go to secure “happiness” at all costs. It’s quite the assured directorial and screenwriting debut from Rebecca Hall, who uses the narrative construct of the novel — two mixed race friends unexpectedly reconnecting in adulthood — to quietly expose the sacrifices women make in terms of their values, morals, hearts, and minds for what society deems acceptable.
Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga play the two women at the heart of the story, friends from rural Georgia that grow up, lose touch, and then accidentally reconnect in the fancy tea room of The Drayton Hotel in New York City. Their interactions and childhood remembrances make it clear early on that both women have white and Black parents, but Negga’s Clare Bellew has the lighter complexion, which allows her to easily “pass” for white to her unabashedly wealthy, racist husband, John (Alexander Skarsgård). While Thompson’s "Reenie" Redfield uses a well-appointed hat and some specific clothing to lean into her lighter skin for the same assumption on this particular day, she stridently exists as a Black woman in her Harlem community.
Expecting their stories to unfold entirely around their racial categorization choices, Hall wisely expands the boundaries of self-definition in the film to extend outwards exponentially as the women’s renewed friendship begins to unravel the carefully constructed lives they’ve both worked so hard to attain. While both exist in upper-middle class lives, the movie focuses on the perspective of Reenie’s life as the wife of a respected Black doctor, Brian (André Holland), and the mother of two growing boys. It’s in their home and world that Clare thrusts herself into, and begins to flourish within, because she doesn’t have to sustain a constant ruse.
And this is where Passing is at its most fascinating. While there’s a disquieting pall of emotional withholding that permeates the whole piece because of how much each woman is holding back in their everyday existences, it’s in their reignited friendship that their true selves bloom again. Their shared secret is the great unifier for them; a place to both share and connect without fear of judgment and they practically hum with organic chemistry that insinuates the sensual from both sides. In their quiet moments with one another, dispensed with purpose and precision throughout the film, both actresses find their moments of devastating honesty with one another, creating scenes that simmer with what’s said and unsaid.
Clare is far freer with her confessions to Reenie, but she’s stingy with the details of her day-to-day life, which keeps her a beautiful mystery in the story. Reenie’s faults and flaws are more exposed in the emotional distance she keeps from her husband and children, how she treats her Black housekeeper, and in her relentless pursuit of a “perfect” existence at any cost. The more time we see them exist in one another’s orbits, the more their life goals seem to blur, and their morally grey areas blend.
It’s both quiet and impactful, and all beautifully realized.
The emotional lives of both women are brilliantly framed by Hall and her cinematographer, Eduard Grau, utilizing a uniquely intimate aspect ratio that keeps the story small and contained. And the use of monochromatic lighting is almost magical in the way it plays with both women’s skin tones to sometimes emphasize their divisions, and at other times almost negate our perception of their ethnicity. In doing that, the film moves beyond just the binary exploration of race and delves into the rest of their complicated issues about masked sexuality, greed, control, and depression. All of it steadily builds towards a climax that is both bravely enigmatic and profoundly impactful in revealing their shared capacity for ruthless self-preservation in a world that wants to define them by just one thing.
Welcome back to IGN Game Spook!, the ONLY Halloween video game podcast! This week your Omega Cops — Daemon Hatfield, Tina Amini, Sam Claiborn, and Justin Davis — are discussing new M-rated games, Guardians of the Galaxy, PS5 sales, N64 games on Nintendo Switch, and more. And, of course, they play Video Game 20 Questions.
Watch the video above or hit the link below to your favorite podcast service.
Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin debuts on Paramount+ on Oct. 29.
As someone whose roots in horror are very tied up in the release of 1999’s The Blair Witch Project, I’ve been an ardent champion of found footage for a long time. When it’s done right, found-footage horror can be terribly imaginative and immersive while remaining budget friendly. Unfortunately, years and years of focus on the latter aspect of the subgenre has taken focus away from the former. There’s no better avatar for that transition than the Paranormal Activity franchise, which like Blair Witch, has its roots in a viral internet campaign that catapulted the austere first film to massive box office success. Cheap to make, Paramount and later Blumhouse quickly started churning out sequels that introduced new camera gimmicks and a surprisingly deep mythology, but also increasingly strained credulity around why any of these people are still filming instead of running for the hills. Rather than furthering the established continuity, Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin reboots the found-footage stalwart for Paramount+, setting up new villains and demons should audiences connect with this film in the same way they did with the original. That’s putting the cart before the horse in a big way, though: Next of Kin brings nothing new to either the Paranormal Activity franchise or found-footage horror, making it a disappointment on multiple fronts.
The first question of found-footage, and the hardest to continue to answer throughout the film: who are these people and why won’t they put their damn cameras down!? Next of Kin goes with the old standby of “documentary filmmakers, one of which is the subject of the documentary.” That’s Margot (Emily Bader), a young woman looking for her birth family. She makes contact with Samuel Beiler (Henry Ayres-Brown), a relative taking a year off from his Amish community. Samuel agrees to introduce Margot to her long-lost family, so she travels deep into the woods to the Beiler farm with hired sound guy Dale (Dan Lippert) and partner Chris (Roland Buck III), a cinematographer whose pricey gear gives the Paranormal Activity franchise a major visual facelift, for better or worse.
Consumer camera tech is a crucial component of making a found-footage horror film feel authentic and immediate. While Next of Kin’s more professional cinematography is crisp and less static than previous Paranormal Activity movies, it loses the distinct visual language the locked-off surveillance-style angles gave earlier entries in a sea of samey handheld horror. Too often, Next of Kin is shot like any old found-footage horror movie, so how scary you find it will rely heavily on your experience with the franchise and with the subgenre in general… that is to say, if you’re familiar with either, it’s not very scary.
The film takes very few risks in constructing its scares, with a number of long pans around dark rooms ending with something popping out from the location second down your list of most likely places to be surprised from. There are even scares that veer straight into derivative territory, calling to mind better-executed moments from more confident films ([REC] fans may start to get deja vu at times during the third act).
Further, Next of Kin sometimes seems to drop the found-footage conceit altogether for no clear reason, and not when it would make sense, like when the characters are being chased by a demon. On the first night, Margot’s estranged grandfather Jacob (Tom Nowicki) has the village’s kids sing a creepy song and the camera glides around the room, in for closeups of slamming fists and faces of Amish folk that we’ve been expressly told at this point hate being filmed. It’s a moment of sensory overload, but one that has no real impact because of the distracting conflict between what it can look like versus, based on the reality of the story, what it should look like. Next of Kin even flirts with slow motion at times, first introducing it as a joke but later calling back the camera’s function in egregious fashion during a death scene.
The young filmmakers Next of Kin follows aren’t the most exciting bunch.
Next of Kin director William Eubank and writer/franchise vet Christopher Landon seem to look back on the original Paranormal Activity’s ethos of “less is more” with a laugh and a shake of the head. The only way Next of Kin really improves on Paranormal Activity’s past is by moving the series’ action out of southern California (spookiest of all locations) to rural Pennsylvania. The remote Beiler farm itself is perhaps the scariest aspect of the film, full of labyrinthine passages and farm buildings capable of evoking an eerie atmosphere day or night. Chris’ drone camera is occasionally and effectively employed to highlight how isolated the characters are on the farm, but it’s perhaps the one piece of tech Eubank restrains himself in using. With drones capable of self-flying and tracking subjects these days, it feels like the franchise missed an opportunity to do something fresh with its new toys.
The young filmmakers Next of Kin follows aren’t the most exciting bunch. Margot and Chris, neither with much of a personality to begin with, each become so consumed with the business of making their documentary and gaining access to parts of the farm they’re being steered away from that the personal reasons behind the project start to lose focus. Sound guy Dale, Next of Kin’s comic relief, lightens things up considerably when he’s on screen, a gently giant goofball who’s not afraid to let the young girls of the village give him a truly hilarious Amish makeover early on that he commits to for the rest of the movie.
Next of Kin does at least shake things up a little when it comes to who’s really pulling the strings on the Beiler farm, giving cut-and-paste antagonists like Jacob at least a slightly more interesting part to play in revealing the nature of the demonic presence plaguing the characters. But Next of Kin doesn’t spend much time on the nuance of the villains’ motivations, capping things off with a predictably open ending that seems more aimed at keeping Paramount’s options open for future installments than satisfyingly wrapping up its own story.
Marvel Comics is launching a new Iron Fist series in 2022, and it won't be starring Danny Rand. Instead, a brand hew hero is taking up the mantle and powers of Iron Fist.
The new volume of Iron Fist is a five-issue limited series written by Alyssa Wong (Star Wars: Doctor Aphra) and drawn by Marvel newcomer Michael YG. Artist Jim Cheung (Young Avengers) is handling covers and designed the new Iron Fist's costume.
Marvel isn't revealing much about the new Iron Fist himself, though based on the cover art he appears to be of Asian descent [note – IGN has reached out to Marvel for comment and we'll update as we learn more].
We do know the new series is building on the fallout of the recent Iron Fist: Heart of the Dragon comic series, which ended with Danny Rand giving up his power to save the world. Danny will be as surprised as anyone to see a new hero taking up the mantle. Marvel is billing the new series as "a revolutionary transformation of one of Marvel’s most fascinating mystical mythologies," while also teasing that the new Iron Fist's powers may not stem from the same source.
“It’s an incredible honor to introduce a new Iron Fist to the Marvel Universe," said Wong in Marvel's press release. "I’m excited to delve into the comic’s rich mythos and build on it. What does it mean for someone to take up the mantle of the Iron Fist right now, today? As a newcomer, how does one interact with legacy, and how does one honor it while forging a new path?
Wong continued, “I’m so stoked to work with artist Michael YG, colorist Jay Ramos, and the rest of the incredible team on this book. And writing this character, who views things through fresh eyes, feels very special to me.”
Look for Iron Fist #1 to hit stores on February 16, 2022.
